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09 September 2015

I ♥ Being a Girl people, Alissa

Hey everyone,

my name is Alissa and I’m from Germany.

Since September 2015 I have joined I <3
being a Girl and I hope with our group we can inspire you and fascinate you
about our themes.

For two years I have been studying social work.
During my internship at pro familia, a non-governmental service and consumer
organization for sexual and reproductive health and rights in Germany, I worked
in the field of pregnancy counselling, which also includes counselling in
conflict situations.

In this time I
learned a lot about women/mother/family rights in Germany on the one hand and
on the other hand I started thinking about the importance of sex education and
the freedom of decision. Those topics were always important to me, especially
in connection of the influence of media and religion in our society, but during
my internship I had the chance to realise the reality of SRHR in Germany.

I got in contact with themes of SRHR and I
started to reflect about the female role in society. This time strengthened my
opinion that women and girls can decide how they want to live their life and
that there still is a need of support.

So those are the reasons I’m writing here but
now more about me :)

3 Things you enjoy doing?

mussels in Brussels

Traveling - I love to travel and getting
around. Thereby you have the chance to get to know other cultures, other people, amazing
landscapes and different food. Which leads me to my next thing I enjoy doing:

I like to try new dishes - Either I
cook and try new recipes or I like to eat out at a restaurant.

Reading a good book or watching a good movie – For
me “good” means that, afterwards, you start thinking about the story and
meaning you saw/read. You are touched by the occurrence, the words and the
people and it feels like it is real. Especially with a book you can understand
a whole generation or historical facts if it is well written.

What makes you continue? Why are you still
doing it?

Now, after half a year of internship, I noticed
that I want to stay active in the fields of women rights. I had the chance to
listen to many lectures and strong women and I could form my own opinion. I
would like other women and girls to have the opportunity to form this too and thereby
they can decide on their own, how they want to live.

The world would be a better place if everybody
would:

Listen to the story of a person.

Watch “The Hours”: The movie is about three women,
living in different generations, interconnected by the novel “Mrs Dalloway” by
Virginia Woolf

Read “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. An
amazing novel about childhood, racism and inequality.

Try regularly something new to broaden one’s
horizon.

Future: before you're 80, you'd like to...

See all the countries of the world. Ok that’s a
lot but there are quite a few places I’d like to visit. For example Corvo, an small island of the Azores archipelago.

Next to my travel plans I hope I can say that
my work as a social worker had an impact on other people and decision makers.
Maybe it was my little input to make the world a better place by helping people
and by pointing out that special groups have a need for help and therefore they
need other options in their lives. These options require to be enabled or we
should support these groups to help themselves.